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Governance please

Tavleen Singh Posted online: Sun Nov 20 2011, 02:31 hrs

It has to be said and I am going to say it clearly. It is time for Anna Hazare to go back to Ralegan Siddhi and take his

NGOs with him. There is real work to be done and it will not get done as long as he continues to bamboozle

Parliament with his totalitarian Jan Lokpal Bill. I am willing to bet that he has not read it or he would know that it will

do no more than create another layer of possibly corrupt officials over our existing layers of corrupt officials.

Nearly all corruption in India relates to government but Annas team would have us believe that the entire private

sector is made up of people like Bellarys Reddy brothers. The Reddy brothers and others who have become

obscenely rich through political clout are looters not industrialists. But because of them, Anna and his team of dodgy

NGOs have succeeded in maligning the entire private sector. They have taken to talking a lot of rubbish these days

about how corruption has increased in India only after the economic reforms. Nobody challenges them because

industry organisations are too timid and there is nobody from government who dares to take them on because the

Prime Minister and his Cabinet made such a shocking mess of handling Annas hunger strike. The unhappy

consequence is that it has made everyone forget that the biggest problem in India is not corruption but bad

governance.

Last week, a group of eminent business leaders came up with a schedule of ten reforms that they call an agenda for

renewal. It is an agenda that suggests reforms in the energy sector, agriculture, urbanisation, education and the

justice system among other things. And if you read between the lines of this agenda, you will detect a desperate plea

for the government to get on with the business of governance instead of floundering about in hopeless confusion as it

has done ever since the United Progressive Alliance won re-election in 2009.

Decades of economic dictatorship in the name of `socialism have taught Indian businessmen to be conservative,

cautious creatures. They have learned to fly under the radar and go about their business unobtrusively. So they have

never dared take credit for leading the economic change we have seen in the past twenty years since they were

released from the shackles of the licence raj. Under it, industrialists could be fined for producing more than their

licences permitted.

The economic reforms that ended the licence raj brought India the only prosperity we have seen since the British Raj

ended. In the four decades of socialism that followed, the number of Indians lifted out of poverty was too small to

count. It is only because of the economic reforms that we have seen more than 150 million Indians rise out of poverty

and be counted as middle class.

So can we please stop talking rubbish about inclusive growth? All growth is inclusive. If prosperity were something

that could be restricted to those who can afford five-star hotels, 700 million Indians would not have cell phones today,

more than 250 million would not have access to television and Internet users would not be increasing at the rate of

five million a month.

The serious flaw in the economic reform process is that there has been absolutely no attempt to reform our hopeless

social sector. We need to makes massive investments in better schools, hospitals and childrens nutrition

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programmes. We must improve sanitation and living conditions both in our villages and in our cities. It is because

nothing has been done to bring reform in these areas that our villages continue to look like cesspools and our cities

look increasingly like slums.

The reforms that reputed businessmen are demanding in their agenda for renewal will benefit not them so much as

the poorest of our citizens. Rich Indians do not need improved public services because they can easily afford private

schools and healthcare and private supplies of clean water and electricity. But, the atmosphere has been so polluted

in the past two years that educated, middle class Indians twitter on endlessly about businessmen and politicians

being in collusion to loot the country. This is nonsense. Their solution, bizarre as this may sound, is that we return to

the old days when officials controlled all economic activity in India.

Corruption is a serious problem and must be dealt with but this cannot mean that we forget about everything else that

needs to be done. In the past year, it has seemed as if the Prime Minister and his ministers have done no more than

handle hunger strikes. It is time they got back to doing some real work. The agenda for urgent reforms that eminent

businessmen have come up with is a good one. Get going Prime Minister or please go.

Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter @ tavleen_singh